It would seem I have decided I need to make myself suffer

Last year, when I first got into Taskmaster, I tried to watch the US version and got about halfway through the second episode before I quit. With TMNZ, I wasn't able to get into it the first go round because it's a vibe thing. It's not a bad show, and even the first time I tried it, I never thought it was a bad adaptation. It just lacks the particular flavour of batshit unhinged that the UK version brings to the table that happens to really do it for me, and a big part of that is the studio banter (and for some reason this really makes fans of NZ really butthurt if you say it out loud, which is unfortunate, because it means there's nowhere to have proper conversations about how the two are different as their own unique shows, separate to one another). But, and this is universally agreed upon, the US version is an absolute clusterfuck of failure. It's easy to say, "oh, it's American, so it's automatically bad," but no. They literally cut the runtime by more than 50% and then tried to cram the exact same show into the same space and expected it to work. And it doesn't.

( This got much bigger than I expected it to )

I've spent way too much time thinking about this today. I think I'm going to go take a bath, and try not to get annoyed by the roofers, and the people outside shouting at the roofers for being too loud, because with about three exceptions everyone in this building is either retired, work from home, or on permanent disability. We're only on day two of these guys being here, and everyone's already fed up with the noise. My husband and I have already made plans to just fucking leave as soon as he wakes up later, because seriously screw all this.

We had a lovely, but disgusting day out in the sun

I would really like it if autumn could hurry up and get here at some point before October, please. Seriously, fuck this bullshit. It's too hot, and it's going to be even worse tomorrow. Between the heat, and the roofers stomping around and playing music loud enough to wake the dead, and the neighbours shouting at the roofers for playing their music so goddamn loudly, I'm a nervous wreck today. But once my husband got up, which he did an hour earlier than usual today, we got the hell out of here and away from the noise and went downtown to go into some of the shops and have a nose around. Annoyingly, one of the shops we specifically wanted to go into is closed on Thursdays, which is a spectacularly odd day to be closed on, but I guess they close on Thursdays so they can be the only shop in town that's open on Monday when everyone else is closed.

We went into a bunch of other random tat shops though, most of which I've never been in before even though that's where I go for my walks every day. But when I'm going for my walk, I don't want to stop and browse around. I'm trying to actively get my steps in, so stopping to look at paintings and weird shit would be counter productive. Today was all about stopping to look at paintings and weird shit, and the very first place we stopped at had a painting I really liked, for only $7. It's not a particularly good painting, and it's not even on a good substrate. It was the sort of ridiculous Wine Mum shit someone slapped onto a piece of ply wood, but it's the sort of thing that's so ridiculous and just the right sort of price that I wanted to bring it home. But it was also enormous, so I didn't want to drag it around all day, so we left it there.

Most of the shops downtown are that sort of shop though. Not quite a thrift shop, not quite an antique shop, but somewhere in between. Just an old brownstone building full of someone's lifetime of collected garbage. We saw so many telephones that were so old they pre-dated dials. You'd have to tell the operator who you wanted to be connected to, even if you'd be able to get them wired in. Old cash machines, proper antique radios, etc. There's an old set of chairs I genuinely may go back for next week, that look like they came from a bowling alley in the 1960s. Also, there was the dead baby corner.



I genuinely can't tell if this is a Halloween decoration, or just part of the shop. But every single shop we went in looked like this. Including the new one we went into, which only just opened. We stepped inside, and at first it was like this. Old, antique crap no one would want. Then, the next room was full of dead things. Squirrels and dogs in jars. Mounted alligators. An actual casket. I need to go back immediately. Upstairs, we found Noel Fielding's wardrobe. I don't know what the fuck was going on up there. Next to the lace vampire shirt was a leather breastplate. I should have taken more pictures, but I always feel bad about that kind of thing. Even taking pictures of the dead baby corner made me feel weird. But I'm definitely going back there as soon as I can, because I have found my people.

We stopped at a few more places, and then on the way home we stopped at the other place again to get my painting.



The other guy didn't come in with me, because at this point he was tired and grumpy, so he stayed outside to sit down on a bench while I ran in to grab this ugly thing and pay. I didn't realise until I picked it up that it hasn't got a frame, so I need to do something about that since I got it specifically to hide the fuse box in the hall. And it won't do that as it is. As I was paying, the lady asked me where my "friend" had gone, and if he was going to help me, and I just laughed and said I had no idea where he'd gone, because he was tired from being out in the sun all afternoon. Then when I found him again, I told him he'd been friend-zoned, and he asked if I'd corrected her. But, like, no. It's never worth it.

But I love this painting, because it's so ugly and terrible. Sometimes, it's nice to have terrible ugly paintings up on the wall, if only because it means I haven't painted them myself.